Bath Bomb 14 hits the streets

Anoth­er issue of Bath’s should-be award win­ning grass­roots pub­li­ca­tion…

anti-cop, right? copy and dis­trib­ute
The Bath Bomb
Issue #14
“All the news the Chron did­n’t Use!”

free/donation

Sept ‘08

Reds, Shite And Booze

Sat­ur­day the 16th of August was to be the sec­ond annu­al Red, White and Blue Fes­ti­val of the BNP, a so-called fam­i­ly event, held on the farm of for­mer Tory coun­cil­lor Alan Warn­er, in Den­by, Der­byshire. Though pitch­ing them­selves as the media-friend­ly ‘Nazi-Lite’ face of mod­ern nation­al­ism, Nick Griffin’s par­ty still can’t quite drag itself away from its hard­line right-wing roots, as betrayed in the pro­gram’s high­lights: talks on ‘her­itage and cul­ture’, night-time nav­i­ga­tion and sur­vival skills, kooky Mor­ris-style danc­ing around a horse skull, stalls sell­ing Union Jack attired gol­li­wogs, and let’s not for­get the Hitler Youth-esque kids’ camp, teach­ing 12-year-olds live ammo marks­man­ship, knife-fight­ing, tech­niques for deal­ing with ‘Marx­ist teach­ers,’ and how to make ‘Dutch arrow’ throw­ing spears (erm.. that does­n’t sound very British). How­ev­er, this insan­i­ty isn’t the sort of shit that ordi­nary peo­ple stand for and, whilst res­i­dents and local activists have been mak­ing plans to shut it down, nation­al­ly, Antifa and the organ­ised Left con­verged.

Though the pow­ers-that-be have no issue with the fas­cist nature of the event, as soon as they realised the storm of resis­tance that was build­ing, police banned the fes­ti­val’s music and liquor licens­es — but did­n’t sub­ject the fes­ti­val to even a mod­icum of the has­sle they did with Cli­mate Camp. Their true colours shined even more so on the day, releas­ing hood­ied-up agents provo­ca­teurs into the 400-strong SWP, UAF, TUC-dom­i­nat­ed march and ral­ly, and Mersey­side cops out­did them­selves by phon­ing and attempt­ing to fit up known anti-fas­cist activists by offer­ing sup­posed lifts to the demo. Whilst the marchers were engag­ing in token pushy-shovey and chant­i­ng with the police line (a lip ser­vice ges­ture to demo­c­ra­t­ic free­dom was made in the form of 30 pro­test­ers escort­ed to the entrance to the fes­ti­val for an insult­ing 15 min­utes, against a hail of BNP abuse), Antifa made their own plans. That morn­ing, 80 masked up and made their way through the under­growth to con­front the fash direct­ly, intend­ing to set up a sys­tem of road­blocks and sab­o­tage. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the first bar­ri­cade, police vio­lence forced them back and into a string of run­ning bat­tles — cul­mi­nat­ing in more than 30 arrests and one injured cop.

So unfor­tu­nate­ly, RWB was­n’t crashed, but was sur­round­ed by chaos (as well as drunk­en sieg-heils) and vil­lagers are now plead­ing with the BNP not to come back; to add your voice to this request, con­tact Alan Warn­er (The Bun­ga­low, Cod­nor Den­by Lane, Den­by Vil­lage, Der­byshire, DE5 8PT, 01773 748129/ 07810 383595, or alan.warner@w3z.co.uk) or organ­is­er David Shap­cott (6 The Spin­ney, Burn­ley, Lan­cashire, BB12 0PB, 07871 029681). But Antifa’s antics do bring up seri­ous ques­tions — con­sid­er­ing the strate­gic impor­tance of the BNP’s RWB, why did so few oppo­nents put in an appear­ance? And how did small, yet admit­ted­ly rabid, clus­ters of cops put supe­ri­or num­bers of deter­mined mil­i­tants to rout and infight­ing, with thrown bricks occa­sion­al­ly hit­ting their own? Beyond talk of machis­mo, organ­i­sa­tion and vio­lence, per­haps more activists need to focus on their own per­son­al lim­its and be hon­est with them­selves over what threats they are pre­pared to face… Not only for the suc­cess of indi­vid­ual actions and the move­ments’ cred­i­bil­i­ty, but also in terms of both our own safe­ty and that of our com­rades And next year, let’s real­ly stop them!

http://www.antifa.org.uk/
http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/688740
http://netcu.wordpress.com
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2008/09/03/bnp…22309

Sainsbury’s And Tesco — Destroy­ing Com­mu­ni­ties All Over The World

While Tesco threat­ens to infest Bath with crap­py ‘food’ and depress­ing, repet­i­tive jobs under patron­iz­ing boss­es who don’t care about you, Sainsbury’s look set to crawl their way into Odd Down. The site pro­posed by Store­gap Com­mer­cial and Odd Down Devel­op­ments would be the same size as Bath’s Mor­risons. If you’re in favour of good qual­i­ty food prod­ucts made with a regard to ani­mal wel­fare and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, work­er’s rights and the fair dis­tri­b­u­tions of wealth — or if you sim­ply hate being rushed around as if you were in a chaot­ic cat­tle mar­ket every time you go out to buy gro­ceries, while being blind­ed by arti­fi­cial light­ing — we’d love to have you on board our cam­paign, aimed at resist­ing super­mar­ket expan­sion and cre­at­ing viable alter­na­tives. Email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk for more details.

A brief update on the Tesco Express on Bath­wick Hill — orig­i­nal­ly due to open ear­ly this year, now, due to the actions of local com­mu­ni­ty and activists, it’s still yet to open its doors due to the enforce­ment of the con­di­tions they tried to weasel out of com­plet­ing.

Watching/Smashing Up The Watch­ers

Your faith­ful, yet para­noid jour­nal­ists here at Bath Bomb tow­ers have giv­en many col­umn inch­es over the past few months to the increas­ing sur­veil­lance we are sub­ject­ed to nowa­days. Britain is now the most sur­veil­lance-heavy coun­try in the world, nar­row­ly best­ing notable com­peti­tors such as Chi­na and the good ol’ US of A. Indus­try insid­ers have agreed that CCTV is almost use­less in deal­ing with real crimes, such as rape and mur­der, and only real­ly comes in use­ful when deal­ing with those things that only politi­cians and the rich count as crimes, such as shoplift­ing. Tak­ing into account their inef­fi­cien­cy at solv­ing seri­ous crime, it can be sen­si­bly assumed that the prime func­tion of CCTV (on which our per­vy gov­ern­ment spends mil­lions each year) is social con­trol; of spread­ing the idea that you can­not step out of line because you are always being watched. Well, now, final­ly, we have a chance to strike back! Octo­ber the 11th is an inter­na­tion­al day of protest and decen­tralised action against CCTV and sur­veil­lance. Want to be part of the fun? A plas­tic bag or well aimed spray can blast can tem­porar­i­ly dis­able a CCTV cam­era, while ham­mers and screw­drivers can do a much less sub­tle, yet longer last­ing job! Won­der­ing how to access those cam­eras in hard to reach places? A paint­brush tied to a bam­boo stick does the trick! There are lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of legal and ille­gal ways we can strike back against big broth­er, so let’s use the 11th as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to show the state we can live out­side of their con­trol, laws, author­i­ty and oppres­sion. If noth­ing else, use the day as a chance to look a CCTV cam­era (or com­mu­ni­ty sup­port offi­cer) dead in the eye, flip a fin­ger and defi­ant­ly shout (safe in the knowl­edge that thou­sands across the globe are doing the same thing) ‘stop look­ing at me fun­ni­ly you weirdos!’.

CCTV News Part Deux

The Bath Bomb can exclu­sive­ly reveal that Big Broth­er (as in 1984, not that real­i­ty TV farce of squawk­ing, ego­ma­ni­a­cal lobot­o­my-cas­es) is chang­ing the way it inter­feres with The Peo­ple and scape­goats the young. Pre­vi­ous­ly obvi­ous CCTV instal­la­tions are now being gut­ted into redun­dant bluff cam­eras, with the real cam­era place­ments being hid­den near­by in tiny black case­ments, though their lens will still need to be exposed to the light of day. And, it’s also recent­ly emerged that sin­is­ter sci­en­tists at Bath Uni have been spy­ing on Blue­tooth users in the city for the last three years, with­out con­sent, with ‘City­ware’ scan­ners fol­low­ing around 3,000 devices every week­end, fol­low­ing cit­i­zens’ move­ments and shop­ping pat­terns. Tar­get­ed mar­ket­ing, or mark­ing tar­gets? We’ve heard it all. Stay out of trou­ble kids!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/21/civilliberties…yfull

The­o­ry Cor­ner Part A: Are All Cops Real­ly Bas­tards?

After read­ing the The­o­ry Cor­ner: ‘Are All Cops Bas­tards?’ arti­cle in July’s issue 12, I got the per­mis­sion of said arti­cle’s author to have my say on this com­plex issue. Yes, the police have devolved from your friend­ly neigh­bour­hood bob­by; the one who made you feel a bit safer, who gave you direc­tions and popped round for a cup of tea (how wrong can you go with old TV pro­grammes as your barom­e­ter for real­i­ty?) They’ve gone from this to a mind­less mass automa­ton who go on pow­er trips and think that any­one who finds them­selves at a demon­stra­tion of any sort, be they strong or not so strong, young or not so young, deserves to at best be spo­ken to in a patron­iz­ing man­ner and at worst be man­han­dled away and arrest­ed for no good rea­son.

BUT, and this is a big but. Tak­ing it as read that the ulti­mate goal of ‘chang­ing the world’ is, in fact, to make that world a bet­ter place for every­one, then we have to realise that cops are in fact human, despite the lengths they can go to try to hide this fact. Take away the uni­form, the weapons, the smug above-you atti­tude and you will find some­one with the same basic needs and desires as every­one else. I’m sure the answer is not to engage in this cat-and-mouse rela­tion­ship with them, slag­ging them off (though they often have no qualms about doing the same to us — for exam­ple the sick­en­ing com­ments on the ‘Police Inspec­tor’s Blog’), just as that is not the way to go with the Rich, though that is anoth­er arti­cle. This, to me, seems a lazy way of going about things that will just enable the sta­tus quo to be kept; we get to make our jokes about PC Plod and nev­er have to come to terms with the fact that they will be part of this new soci­ety.

I don’t know what the way for­ward is, I think it is a slow path, where we get out of our cosy activist cor­ners and mix with peo­ple of all walks of life, even those who make us feel ill with what they’re doing to the world. We wel­come peo­ple and talk to them about our way of life, with­out judg­ing or forc­ing any­one to see it our way. Some will come over to our side. Some will resist, but we nev­er know what effect our view­point is hav­ing on them. It is hard to change, and won’t hap­pen over night. But only with these small vic­to­ries and grad­ual changes will any real and last­ing change ever come about. To describe a group of peo­ple as large­ly irre­deemable, will cause defen­sive­ness — we have to believe in the pos­si­bil­i­ty in peo­ple to change, whether they show us any proof of this or not. You can do so much more with peace and wel­come than you can with vio­lence, judge­ment and iso­la­tion — isn’t that what ‘our side’ is all about? After all, this oth­er way’s been tried so many times before, in fact it’s all we as a human race has ever done, and has it ever worked? With this dis­mis­sive atti­tude we con­demn our­selves to a lim­it­ed suc­cess, when with all our skills, ener­gy, ideas and com­pas­sion, we can achieve so much more.

http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/young‑m…n‑go/ (police inspec­tor’s blog)
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&…34851 (newslet­ter issue 12)

Stop The Wars, Stop The Walls & Stop Wall Street

Despite what the Dai­ly Mail would have us believe, we are all now a wit­ness to an unprece­dent­ed rise in bor­der man­age­ment and social con­trol. Neo-Labour is at the fore­front of this squeeze, and are hold­ing their annu­al par­ty con­fer­ence in Man­ches­ter this month. Coin­cid­ing with this, with vio­lence peak­ing in Afghanistan, drag­ging on in Iraq, and break­ing in Geor­gia, Stop The War have called for a ‘Troops Out’ march on Sat­ur­day the 20th at 12 mid­day, and the UK No Bor­ders net­work have also jumped in — anti-author­i­tar­i­ans and all oth­ers against bor­ders, states and war can con­sid­er them­selves humbly invit­ed to join the ‘Free­dom of Move­ment’ bloc, assem­bling at the north end of Albert Square — fol­low the red and black flags!

http://www.manchesternoborders.org.uk
http://www.stopwar.org.uk
http://www.acbar.org
http://www.bathstopwar.org.uk/

Racist BIAs­tards Feel The Heat In Bris­tol

In oth­er immi­gra­tion-relat­ed news, No Bor­ders activists recent­ly paid a vis­it to the British Immi­gra­tion Author­i­ty offices in Por­tishead. BIA round up failed immi­gra­tion appli­cants for forced depor­ta­tion. Favourite tac­tics include ‘dawn raids’, intend­ed to round up the whole fam­i­ly before the kids can get to school. Recent brave deeds by our jack­boot­ed friends have includ­ed the forced removal of a Columbian sin­gle moth­er from the Bris­tol area, her 7‑year-old son send­ing a let­ter to his class mates from a deten­tion cen­tre read­ing ‘I don’t know why I am here, they have put me in prison, but I promise I haven’t done any­thing wrong’. When activists arrived at the Por­tishead BIA cen­tre, from which Bath and Bris­tol dawn raids are launched, the build­ings’ locks were glued, the entire fleet of vehi­cles used for dawn raids were destroyed with span­ners, etch­ing flu­id and paint strip­per and the slo­gan ‘racist thugs work here’ was daubed over walls for all to see. BIA rep­re­sent the sharp end of the state’s racist war on asy­lum seek­ers, who, hav­ing fled per­se­cu­tion, ter­ror and tor­ture, ask only for a safe place to live, and not to be deport­ed to cer­tain death and impris­on­ment. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the major­i­ty find out the hard way that gov­ern­ment the world over is a bru­tal mech­a­nism for the repres­sion and incar­cer­a­tion of ordi­nary peo­ple. We must stand side by side with oth­er oppressed peo­ples strug­gling for a decent stan­dard of life, and like the BIA sabo­teurs, fight for a world with­out bor­ders or gov­ern­ments, and respond by any means nec­es­sary to the vio­lent and destruc­tive forces of state and cap­i­tal.

Frothy Cin­e­mat­ic Under­cur­rents

After the sum­mer break, the Bub­bling Under series of rad­i­cal film lunch­es will return to the big[ish]screen at the Porter Cel­lar, start­ing again on Sun­day the 28th Sep­tem­ber, from 1 til 4pm, free entry. This month, we will be show­ing a cou­ple of film­lets — one about the recent Camp for Cli­mate Action in Kent, and the oth­er about the upcom­ing Shut I.T.T./Smash EDO day of action in Brighton, fol­low­ing up on June’s suc­cess­ful Car­ni­val Against the Arms Trade. Come along for great grub, food for thought, and mediocre com­pa­ny! Drop us a line if you have any ideas for upcom­ing films, to show on the third Sun­day of the month.

http://www.smashedo.org.uk/shut-itt.htm
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/

The­o­ry Cor­ner Part B: Meta­mor­pho­sis and Lib­er­a­tion

It’s all too easy to feel help­less in the face of the state, like a tiny cog in a tow­er­ing machine. Reli­gion and tele­vi­sion preach the impor­tance of “find­ing your­self” and “stay­ing true” to that self once you’ve found it. But we should­n’t feel trapped and lim­it­ed by our genes and the expe­ri­ences and con­di­tion­ing soci­ety has giv­en us — we have no true self and life should be about cre­at­ing it, not find­ing it! As human beings we have a vast poten­tial for self-change. The aware­ness of the abil­i­ty you pos­sess to change your­self can be extreme­ly lib­er­at­ing. It’s impor­tant to start small — choose a habit at ran­dom you wish to adopt or elim­i­nate. At first, this should be some­thing so sim­ple you can’t fail at it, like hav­ing an extra sug­ar in your tea each morn­ing. Keep the same goal for two or three weeks, and scrib­ble it on a post-it note and stick it to the fridge, if this helps you remem­ber. There are all sorts of self-hyp­no­sis tech­niques that can help. Focus­ing intent­ly on your goal while in an altered state of con­scious­ness accessed by med­i­ta­tion, danc­ing, drum­ming, chant­i­ng, orgasm, art… (try star­ing intent­ly at your­self in a mir­ror while try­ing not to let your eyes dis­tort the image) are all ways to do this. Remem­ber to ground after­wards! Laugh­ter helps.

It’s impor­tant to set a new tar­get once you’re done with the old one. Start small and your con­fi­dence and self-dis­ci­pline will grow so long as you make willed self-change a habit. Work up to big­ger goals and you’ll realise that things you thought you could­n’t do are total­ly pos­si­ble — con­fronting a pho­bia, going veg­an, tak­ing direct action. Elim­i­nat­ing fears and smash­ing taboos (eat­ing food from skips, act­ing odd­ly in pub­lic) can be so empow­er­ing and widen your range of pos­si­ble expe­ri­ences.

http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/rites/beyondwa.…html

EVENTS

Mon­days
Bath Hunt Sabs Meet­ing, 8pm, Bell
Wednes­days
Lon­don Rd Food Co-op, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, 4–7pm
Sat­ur­days
Bath Stop The War Vig­il, Abbey Court­yard, 11.30–12.30
Sat­ur­day 20th Sept
No Wars No Bor­ders, All Saints Park, Man­ches­ter, 12.30
Fri­day 26th Sept
Anti-foie gras demo, out­side Mini­bar, John St, 7–9pm
Sun­day 28th Sept
Bub­bling Under, the Porter Cel­lar Bar 1–4pm
Wednes­day 1st Oct
Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, back room of the Bell, 7.30–8.30pm
Thurs­day 2nd Oct
Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Hob­gob­lin, down­stairs 7.30–9pm
Fri­day & Sat­ur­day 3–4th Oct
No Bor­ders Fest, TJs, New­port
Sat­ur­day 11th Octo­ber
Day of action against sur­veil­lance
Sat­ur­day 11th Oct
West­side Cli­mate Camp Gath­er­ing, Wind­mill Hill City Farm, Bris­tol, 10–5
Sat­ur­day 11th Oct
Bath Freeshop, Stall St, 12–3pm
Wednes­day 15th Oct
Smash I.T.T, opp Falmer Sta­tion, Brighton, meet 12noon

For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.myspace.com/bathbomb

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat on. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…

Q: Who Are Bath Activist Net­work? A: A local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce The Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

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